Creating a contract with family and friends

November 29, 2009|By Nara Schoenberg, TRIBUNE NEWSPAPERS

When Deborah Hutchison's friend offered to lend her a rare Blue Dog print by the artist George Rodrigue, Hutchison was quick to seal the deal.

To anyone else, that would have meant a hug or handshake, but Hutchison, co-author of "Put It in Writing! Creating Agreements Between Family and Friends" (Sterling, 2009), had something else in mind. Together with her pal, she wrote up and signed a surprisingly matter-of-fact agreement providing for contingencies up to and including fiery plane crashes.

"If something happened to me, or my husband and myself, and my family were to come across this Blue Dog print, they would know what to do," Hutchison said. "It's going to get returned to (my friend). It's not part of my estate just because it was hanging on the wall.

"So that's the beauty of that agreement."

Beauty is one word for it.

Hutchison, who also has a written agreement with a relative to whom she has lent money and a sibling with whom she is sharing responsibility for caring for an aging parent, knows that the approach is going to make the rest of us a tad uncomfortable.

The change comes, she said, when people realize that a little directness upfront can prevent a lot of heartache down the line.

Have you ever lent money to a friend and ended up with hurt feelings on both sides? Have you clashed with a loyal roommate over who cleans the bathroom when? Have you invited an adult child to move in with you only to seethe silently over late-night guests and unwashed dishes?

If you've been in any of these situations, you already know the limitations of a no-questions-asked approach.

"My mission (is) to just help people talk in these situations that are so emotional, between families and friends," Hutchison said.

"We say, 'It's just my family, I'll lend them this money.' Or, 'It's my friend, I'll lend them this money.' And if things go awry, and your friend doesn't give the money back when you thought they should give it back to you, or when they're wearing something that you think they just bought and they owe you some money" there's going to be tension.

"I thought, 'How can we take these situations and just give clarity?'"

Written agreements are a great idea, says Judith McKay, director of community resolution services at Nova Southeastern University in Florida.

"From my experience, these emotionally fraught areas are typically ones where a little miscommunication can go a long way toward hard feelings and misperceptions," McKay said.

Take the example of the adult child who loses his job and moves home for what his parents expected would be a six-month stay. Two years later, he's back on his feet, but still living at home and still contributing nothing to the household financially.

"At that point, you can have a lot of family conflict, with both sides sometimes feeling they're the injured party," McKay said. "The adult child thinks, 'Well, I'm your child. You, of course, welcomed me home, and I didn't hear any strings attached.' The adult parent may be thinking, 'Well, we didn't mean forever. We're watching you get your life back together and we're real happy about that, but in the meantime, you're kind of tripping the light fantastic, and we're paying the bills.'"

Hutchison and her co-author, "Divorce Court" judge Lynn Toler, offer clarity -- and then some -- in their book, in the form of detailed sample agreements covering issues ranging from loans to divorced parenting to teen driving.

Hutchison said one of her friends hammered out an agreement with a son who was moving back home after college, carefully considering his responsibilities and hers. After her friend went over the agreement with her son, Hutchison said, he told her, "'Wow. I didn't know you did so much for me.'"

When the son broke one of the rules in the agreement and had to move out, everyone was fine with that outcome because they had agreed on their expectations ahead of time, Hutchison said.

"There wasn't much push-back on my part," said Nikki Schierer, who had graduated from Indiana University and worked in the corporate world for two years when she moved in with her mom temporarily. "There were certain parts of (the agreement) where I (said) 'This is so stupid. Why do I have to fill this out? It's not like you and I have had a contentious relationship. You're my best friend.' But it ended up that the things I was most pushing back on were the things that were most necessary."

Splitting the cable bill, for example. Schierer didn't think she should have to because her mom was already getting cable. Her mom didn't care: She thought that if Schierer was going to watch TV, she was going to help pay for it.

"I felt a little entitled. I'm not going to lie. It's a generational thing," Schierer said. "This was kind of a wake-up call."